


On Moving In

by thesorceressfromthelake



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angels, Gen, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 19:06:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13014219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesorceressfromthelake/pseuds/thesorceressfromthelake
Summary: Rafael has chosen to focus on how much he hates most people he works with rather than the fact that Sonny asked him to move in with him. Sonny asked him to move in. That one keeps repeating and Rafael can't get it out.Something resembling an It's a Wonderful Life AU.





	On Moving In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skysquid22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skysquid22/gifts).



> For the lovely SkySquid22 who wanted Barba or Carisi struggling to say they loved each other and/or fluff and/or It's a Wonderful Life and I corrupted all their prompts. I hope you enjoy it!

It has not been a particularly good day. 

Sometime between having to deal with Mickey D’Angelo’s blistering smarm, the collapse of his case theory because apparently Rollins and Fin can’t do research, and the seventh call Carmen had to brush off from a reporter, something inside Rafael snapped and he spent the rest of the day completely alone and in a state of mild panic and borderline rage. The one brightside on being frustrated about the case, though, is that it leaves all other issues to the wayside, so Rafael doesn’t even have time to worry about anything else until he’s headed home. But that worry creeps up on him no matter what, as it has done so often lately. 

Rafael Barba wouldn’t describe himself as a fearful person. In fact, he thinks one of his better qualities, overall, is his tendency to really “not give a single fuck about other people” and what they think about him, in the words of Eddie Garcia, back when they were sixteen. So, he doesn’t want to classify what he’s feeling, at the moment, as fear. Fear would imply that he’s afraid of Carisi, or his reactions, which he isn’t, or it implies he’s a coward who can’t even handle his own feelings. Neither of which are how he wishes to view himself.

So, he’s not going to classify this emotion as fear. Even if whatever it is welling up in his stomach is sticky and suffocating, all the way up to his throat when he sees Sonny, even though he’s been avoiding Sonny, just a bit, for the past few days. 

He’s not going to classify it as love either. That feels too sentimental. Even if Rafael is fairly certain that is what it is. 

Rafael has been walking around with this feeling in his stomach for days now, months probably, if Rafael tries to reach for some real honesty, but it’s advanced to a stranglehold state on his very being when Sonny leaned across the couch while they were sitting, eating pad thai and yellow curry, and invited Rafael to move in with him. “Or I can move in with you,” he hurries to clarify when Rafael blanks completely, “either way. I know you’d want to keep your apartment but, either way,” Carisi smiles, cocky, like he already knows what Rafael’s going to say, “we should live together.”

Rafael says yes, of course. Because he isn’t a coward. 

But there’s a plunging feeling of doubt, and that’s it--he’s finally placed his emotion, it’s doubt, and probably some love, just a bit, deep inside of him that makes him wonder. It makes sense he wasn’t able to recognize it. If Rafael is really, really trying for honestly, he’s more familiar with fear than doubt.

That doubt hasn’t left him for even one second, not at work, not in bed, not when Sonny came up from behind this morning and wrapped his arms around him. He must have noticed Rafael freeze up. He must have thought it was strange. 

Sonny seems to think this is a natural next step, talking about moving plans all yesterday morning, and this morning, and, annoyingly, probably every morning until they live together if Rafael’s reading the situation correctly. Sonny, apparently, hasn’t lived with anyone since he was twenty-five and could finally afford his own place. Sonny, apparently, has never lived with a romantic partner before; he’s never had a relationship worth taking that step in. 

Neither has Rafael.

Which has left him with this horrible, tightening feeling which has gradually increased over the days until now, while he’s staring at his phone, trying desperately to call Lyft and completely unable to do so. He’s standing outside the courthouse unable and unwilling to go home, too wrapped up in the overwhelming feeling that, if he does so, he’s going to ruin everything. Rafael can’t imagine seeing Sonny right now, can’t imagine going home and telling him he loves him because he’s certain something else will slip out. 

‘I don’t want to move in with you.’ Or ‘we’re moving too fast’ despite the fact that they’ve been seeing each other for over a year. Or something worse, something much worse, that he doesn’t even mean could come out, something he doesn’t even mean. He imagines him saying something just horrible to Sonny and his face freezing, face falling and Rafael’s head spins. He needs to center, find himself control of the situation before he does anything rash. He’s not certain what ‘anything rash’ is yet but just because he hasn’t thought through the details doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. 

The most innocuous, simple decisions tend to lead to the most disastrous consequences, like walking far away from a warm, safe home and off into the unknown for a cool down. Rafael isn’t thinking that at the moment, though. Centering himself, while the snow swirls around him, he starts off walking. He plans to go for coffee, cool off his head for a second but he can’t stop himself from going farther, far past where he originally planned, and barely notices nearly slipping on the way. He walks until his feet are cold and his fingers tingle and he looks around and can’t seem to recognize where he is. This doesn’t even look like Manhattan anymore. Somehow everything around here looks smaller. The buildings, the streets, everything’s older, there are less people and when Rafael catches sight of their faces there’s nothing rushed or serious in their expressions everyone just looks. 

Terribly lost. 

Rafael doesn’t want to see them at all. And he wants to be out of the cold. So he studies the buildings around him until he finds a restaurant and ducks inside to sit. 

There’s a woman next to him. He’s sat down and doesn’t even remember, ordered coffee because there’s coffee right in front of him. Rafael can’t even finish his thought about how invasive it is to sit next to someone you don’t even know before the woman looks up and straight at him. Then Rafael can’t think to say even a single word. 

The woman in front of him is indescribable. Not in a physical way, Rafael can see what she looks like and clutches onto that like a lifeline. She’s tall and white-haired; she’s heavyset and wears thick brown glasses and a shirt with pale pink flowers. She’s at least ten years older than Rafael. He’s certain his eyes would pass over in a crowd but the moment Rafael looked at her he felt such a sense of bone crushing fear it froze him to the core. He felt hot and cold; fear and what has to be awe, though he’s certain he’s never felt awe before, not even stepping into court for the first time. Not a bit of it is anything he’s felt before or ever wants to feel again. 

It’s gone in a moment. And the woman is anyone else. But Rafael continues to stare. 

“Is anyone sitting here?” Her voice is light enough to be whispering. Rafael isn’t a bit surprised. He opens his mouth to answer and she waves him down. “Yes, me. I know.” That reply dies in Rafael’s throat and he starts to feel even more unsettled. She places her hand next to his and smiles at him. She pushes the coffee cup slightly toward him. He must have ordered it, but he can’t for the life of him remember ordering anything and his head pounds. She smiles at him, slight and very patient. 

“Are you feeling dizzy? In any pain?” Rafael lets his eyebrows raise. “Do you remember how you got here?”

“I walked.” The woman lets out a hmm at that and leans back. The diner is full, stuffed to the brim with people in almost every booth, but conversation buzzes in his ears whenever Rafael tries to listen to anyone but the woman. She’s still smiling, just slightly, just in a small way, and Rafael feels a smile slipping onto his face without even thinking. 

The restaurant is small and homey and it doesn’t feel entirely real, even though there’s nothing interesting about it. It looks like Perkins. That thought sticks with Rafael far longer than it should. 

“Do you remember what happened?” Rafael finds himself shaking his head no, uncertainty diluting his every move. If he knew what was happening, he would find himself on something resembling level ground but nothing he can think of provides anything resembling an explanation on why he found himself in some restaurant in a place that doesn’t even look like New York, talking to a woman who is simultaneously the most intimidating and comforting presences Rafael has ever experienced. This situation is so surreal he is willing to believe almost anything. 

And suddenly he remembers. He remembers slipping, remembers falling on the ice and laying there, alone, and he can’t remember getting up and he can’t imagine why he wouldn’t just get up, especially since it’s so easy to do but he remembers an incredible amount of pain and it all comes together to a single, horrifying conclusion that can’t possibly be true because he’s sitting down and clearly alive but there doesn’t seem like any other possibility. He remembers bleeding. He remembers the ground. He doesn’t know how that could have possibly killed him. There must have been something else. 

“I’m dead.”

“No, that’s not how I would describe the situation.”

“Then how would you ‘describe the situation’. Am I not dead?”

“Only in the most technical of senses.” 

Rafael feels his head pulse and thinks, with all of certainty of a man who has had this thought before, that he is going to have a stroke and die some day. Except maybe not anymore, because he probably fell on some ice and died. The angel waits very patiently for him to crawl his way out of whatever existential state he sunk to. The angel grasps his hand in his state of distraction. “You aren’t dead. Not really. I know faith is hard for you, so I won’t expect you to take that on my word. If I could prove it to you, I would. But you are not dead, and this is not the afterlife.”

Rafael doesn’t even believe in the afterlife, but he’s having difficulty formulating a better explanation. The woman takes any decision out of his hands. “You have questions. I know. So ask them.”

“How did I get here?”

“Like you said. You walked.” Rafael sends her an unimpressed glare and she nods slightly, like she’s thinking to herself. “Perhaps not the best way to put that. You were led here. Will that work?”

The answer is no, but Rafael is certain he’s not going to get anything clearer so he gives up. He has another question and he’s trying to think of the best way to ask it. “Who” is wrong, he knows that. “What are you?”

“I couldn’t translate. Would calling me an angel work for you?” Rafael hopes his face is portraying the correct level of disdain he has for that. The woman shrugs looking a little embarrassed. “It’s the closest I can do. I’m an angel.”

The angel, or whatever she is, is far too far into Rafael’s personal space. He leans back and drinks coffee. It is, he admits begrudgingly to himself, really good coffee. The angel smiles. “You’re asking the wrong questions. Ask the questions that you need to ask.”

“Why am I here?”

“You need help.” Rafael’s face twists into something unpleasant until he remembers that he did, in fact, die earlier that day. Still, it doesn’t feel like the whole answer and he’s a prosecutor. When the witness holds back he needs to get the whole story. 

“Why else?”

“We let you come.”

Still not enough. “Why else?”

The woman smiles at him, undeterred. “All appeals must be suited to the needs of the individual, and I don’t think you need to, say, complete any dramatic tasks or see what the world would be like without you. You just need to talk. Well,” she continues hands spread out over the table, “here I am.”

Rafael’s not entirely finished with the first part of that sentence. “Are those things you’ve done before.” He states, in a way that is clearly not a question. The woman ignores him. 

“Is there anything else before we start?”

Rafael bites back ‘I don’t want to talk to you’ because he’s not...that...childish. He’s not done with questions in any case. “How did you find me? Why are you helping me” He emphasizes me and resists the urge to point to himself.

“Someone’s been praying.” Rafael’s mind goes to Sonny sitting by himself in a room, trying to appeal to God on his behalf and something dark inside him curls his mouth into a sneer. 

“You’ve been praying.” Rafael stares. 

“I have not.” Voice indigent and higher than he’d like. To hide his defensiveness, he relaxes his body language though he knows it’s pretty hopeless given how this woman—angel—do angels even have genders they probably don’t—is looking at him. 

“You’ve asked for an intervention, and we are here for you. It was deep in your heart but you asked. Though,” she leans forward, far more into Rafael’s personal space than he would normally feel comfortable with, more than she had been before “I’m not certain you need nearly as much help as you think you do. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly why you’re here, Rafael Barba. I am almost as confused about it as you. You don’t need the services I usually provide. You know you’re worth something—“

/Rafael has his hands on Delores Rodriguez as she shakes. Lewis Honda is going to prison and he can tell she wants to cry but she’s holding back her tears as she thanks him/He feels Amelia Albers’ steady gaze as she watches Taverts and her former teammates sentenced/Liv tells him about Jenny Aschler’s reaction to finally, finally getting something resembling justice and pride glows inside him/Greg Yates sends himself straight to prison and Carl Rudnick does the same/Rafael steps into church for the first time in years to watch Patrick Mulregan marched out/He’s in court, again/again, watching verdicts and arguments pass before his eyes/Guilty/not guilty/again/again/again/again.

“And you know you’re worth something to somebody—“

Liv tells him about William Lewis in spurts, fingers relaxed at her side in a way that’s clearly practiced. He won’t ask questions. He sits there and listens/Rafael attends Eddie’s son’s birthday and his eyes lights up when he calls him his uncle/Rollins sits in the witness box and tells him everything Patton did to her, and the next day Rafael destroys him/His mother sits down with him finally, one year after his grandmother’s death, and they drink together, very quietly/Sonny sitting next to him, firing legal question after question/Sonny is holding his hand, in public, and Rafael doesn’t feel the least bit embarrassed/Sonny is asking him to live with him. 

“Did you just need a reminder?”

“No, that wasn’t it—I—“

He cuts himself off, eyes blank into the distance. The moments overwhelm and he crosses his arms over his chest. The angel sits in comfortable silence for a moment before speaking. “What were you concerned about, when you fell?”

He’s certain, completely certain she knows why he was upset just as she infuriatingly seems to know everything about a situation that he is so lost in. He’s not used to holding so few of the cards. But, when she looks at him, Rafael wants to tell her anyway. He wants her to understand. 

“Sonny wants me to move in with him and I love him,” why is it so easy to tell someone else and so difficult to tell him, “—I do and I want to be with him but—I can’t imagine it ever working out between us. Not like I want. Not forever.” He’s imagined arguments in the future, about the future. He’s imagined family friction and Sonny cheating; Sonny getting so sick of him he leaves. Every worst case scenario end of their relationship possible has run through Rafael’s mind at some point and it has made it so hard to see a happy ending. “It seems like such a risk.”

She stares at him. “Isn’t everything you’ve ever done a risk?”

Rafael is pulled back by the throat, air dying in his lungs as he struggles to keep his eyes on the jury/He’s talking to a woman, begging her to testify, getting closer and closer to truly desperate action/He stands up and straight up yells at a judge for making a victim—for making a girl who’s only basically a kid lose her justice/He’s arguing with Liv/He leans up and kisses Sonny Carisi/He’s asking his grandmother if she wants to move/He’s saying he’s going to become a lawyer/He’s screaming at his parents/He’s asking for a transfer to Manhattan/He stands outside with Alex and begs him to contradict what Rafael knows is true/He--

“Oh! Yeah.” Rafael sounds close to losing his mind, hands tightening around the cup in front of him. “Because that all proves I have great instincts and trusting people works out really well for me.”

“Do you trust Sonny?”

Rafael mouth runs dry. He expects another set of flashes but they never some. The angel looks at him passively. Waiting. 

“Do you trust—“

“Yes. I do.” Not even a question. Not even anything resembling a question.

“So trust yourself. You trust this man and you love this man so trust your feelings.”

Rafael wants to go home and shake Sonny and ask him if this is what it’s like to have a religious experience and if it’s always so terrible. “What if I can’t?” Doubt pours out, every bit of doubt he’s suppressed and smothered comes out in four words and he’s suddenly, miraculously, free.

“Then you can’t. But you can. You are here, after all. And you can stay here as long as you like, until you can.” The angel, Rafael notices, drinks tea, and for some reason, that’s funny to him. So he laughs. She smiles and he wonders if she knows what he found funny. She probably does. She seems like she would. Rafael thinks. He thinks of Sonny, thinks of his smile, thinks of sitting next to him and complaining about his day, thinks about coming home to a house full of him and all his books that Rafael would never read and baseball cards he doesn’t know why he collects. He thinks about having someone with him who will eat with him and let him complain about how much he hates defense attorneys and bounce legal theories off of. He thinks about love.

Rafael doesn’t have to stay long. Not at all. If he were the type of person to let doubt stop him from doing exactly what he wants, he wouldn’t be where he is. 

Rafael starts to stand and then turns back, not really willing to face the angel completely. He can tell she’s waiting. “This doesn’t seem like the type of problem divine forces would have to deal with.”

She waits five seconds, ten. “You could have figured this out on your own. You’re right. But,” she reaches up for his hand and he moves to shake it but she just holds on, “no one in the world has small problems and that includes you. There’s no reason to die feeling so unloved. You ended up here, all by yourself. Why wouldn’t I help you?”

Rafael is standing, and very cold. Rafael falls and—

Rafael falls and a woman catches his arm while he’s falling. He still almost toppled but she holds him steady and he rights himself. “Are you alright?”

He nods, dazed, staring at her. “Yes. Thank you. I’m fine.”

The woman smiles, adjusts her dark coat more securely around her pink sweater. “Be careful. It’s slippery around here.” Rafael watches her leave, too many thoughts swirling in his head, too many ideas and concepts and theories. 

Rafael looks down at his feet, planted steady on the ground, looks back up toward the sky, and starts to walk. 

He walks, fingers still cold, head still light and filled with nothing but I love you, repeated over and over again. He’ll tell Sonny when he gets home.

**Author's Note:**

> Dream Ghosts from Crazy Ex Girlfriend plays in the background.


End file.
